For instance, if you're a black guy and you got pulled over, and you didn't know that any other black men were being pulled over, you would constantly in the back of your head be thinking, "What did I do?" rather than, "I didn't do anything, these are just the conditions I live under."

I asked a lot of friends and people I'd meet, "Can you tell me a story of a micro-aggression that happened to you in a place you didn't expect it to happen?" I wasn't interested in scandal, or outrageous moments. I was interested in the surprise of the intimate, or the surprise of the ordinary.

The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much / to you.

For instance, if you're a black guy and you got pulled over, and you didn't know that any other black men were being pulled over, you would constantly in the back of your head be thinking, "What did I do?" rather than, "I didn't do anything, these are just the conditions I live under."

The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you.

I also found it funny to think about blackness as the second person. That was just sort of funny. Not the first person, but the second person, the other person.

Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment.